Hiro nearly charged at the bladed bat amalgamation but stopped as he saw its wingspan, the way its wings tore into the walls of the hallway, the sound deafening. The seething monster continued to wield a blade, its beady black eyes locked on Juan.

“Let’s try this!” Hiro hit the monster with {Blade Whirlwind}. Juan followed this up with a powerful strike from his baseball bat that managed to bring the creature down, leaving it prone.

Hiro used a precision {Bounce} to launch himself at the monster, where he was able to land on top of it and drive his katana into its face.

“Holy shit, man!” Juan said as Hiro received Soul Essence.

You have new followers!

The prompt was cut short by more shrieking down the hallway.

“The stairs are that way.” Juan pointed to the other end of the hallway, which was mostly dark aside from an arc of grayish light.

Hiro removed his blade, blood dripping from its tip. He flicked some of it away. “Right toward their shrieks, yeah?”

“Right toward them. I’m sorry, bro.”

“It’s fine. This is what I signed up for.”

“You didn’t have to sign up for shit.” Juan eyed Hiro’s blade. “That’s crazy you got a katana. Wish I had some shit like that. And you actually know how to use that thing?”

“No.”

Juan blinked twice. “Right, the Doom System. Fuck it, let’s go.”

Juan was just stepping over the amalgamation’s sharp metal wing when he stopped. Juan spit on the beast’s carcass, said “Puta madre,” under his breath, and moved on as the creature began to disintegrate.

Smaller winged monsters gripping swords swung into the hallway as they neared the stairwell. One of the three was instantly disrupted by Hiro’s Hyottoko mask, which caused the monster to flap backward, a wry grin flashing across its toothy face.

The other two moved forward, and the first to swing its sword did so with enough abandon that it flipped the creature’s body around. The bat twisted fully, its sharp wings scissoring toward Juan and Hiro.

{Blade Whirlwind} beat it back, yet his attack only did a little damage as the second bat rushed forward, its claws grazing against the ground as it moved beneath Hiro’s strike.

Juan came down on its head with his weapon, cursed in Spanish, and hit it again.

Clank! Hiro blocked the next bat’s sword with his own blade, which forced the creature backward, allowing Juan to beat this one down and kill it.

“What the hell is with the last fucker?” Juan asked as Hiro finished the first amalgamation with his katana. He nodded to the one that continued to hesitate, as if trying to contain laughter. “Laughing? Fucker lost its mind, man.”

Hiro moved on the laughing bat triggered by his mask and killed it, gaining more Soul Essence.

“This way.” Juan took off down the stairwell, Hiro following after him.

They were met by more of the smaller creatures, which they easily killed even if they were fighting them in the stairwell. It seemed like the pair would reach the basement without incident when they heard a terrible, screeching roar.

“Fuck, fuck,” Juan said as they came out onto the basement level. “That’s the one.”

“How are we going to see it? It’s dark down here.”

Juan clicked something attached to his backpack strap. A beam of blue light illuminated the space beyond. “Came with the backpack. You didn’t get one?”

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“The light came with the backpack?”

“Front little pocket.”

“I didn’t check.”

Hiro placed his bloody blade on the ground. While Juan stood guard, he turned to his backpack. He didn’t open the main pocket—he already knew the strange teddy bear was inside. Instead, he went for the front pocket and found a small light on a carabiner. “Damn.”

“Damn is right, put it on.”

Hiro put the light on, adjusted its trajectory, and turned it on.

He peeked around the corner to see something that resembled the first bat they had killed, only bigger, the creature large enough that it was stuck in the hallway. It shuffled back and forth like an angry drunk, the best still gripping its mangled sword.

The bat opened its mouth and released a boiling black liquid that immediately took on the form of human torsos. While the torsos didn’t have lower halves, they were able to move through the black substance on the ground as if it were water.

“We cut through its hellspawns and then stab it to death? Something like that?” Hiro asked hurriedly.

“Yep. I deal with the hellspawns while you keep spamming it with that sword wind power you have. I’m going to transform. Check this.” Upon saying this, Juan’s skin hardened into something that looked like a fluid metal. It extended down past his arm, engulfing his baseball bat as well. “It’s called {Steelskin}, some T-1000 shit. Let’s go.”

The two moved deeper into the hallway, where Juan beat back the inky demon spawns, his strength and power amplified. As he stepped aside, Hiro focused on the large bat monster beyond.

He blasted it with bolts from his blade, the light on his chest providing brief, terrifying glimpses into the dark of a creature that shouldn’t exist, amalgamations of the damned.

Wham! Juan struck one of its headless torso summons as it reached out for Hiro.

Hiro kept spamming the enormous bat monster with his katana attack until it finally let out an ear-piercing shriek, one followed by a death rattle.

[A hunter has fallen.]

“So that’s what that was.” Juan sucked in a deep breath as the metal covering his body began to retract. “This fucking place.” He approached a door that had been barricaded. He knocked. “Carmen, it’s me.”

A muffled female voice responded. “Juanito?”

There was the sound of something happening on the other side. Juan responded by moving the piece on his side as well, which consisted of a thick board that required lifting to remove. “Locks from the inside and outside. You’ll see why,” he told Hiro as the metal covering his body faded.

Jaun opened the door to reveal Carmen, the woman wheelchair-bound with a wooden plank across her lap, the room illuminated by floodlights jerry-rigged to car batteries. There were sleeping mats in one corner, and what looked like a seat that would be used in a tattoo studio. The place smelled of sage, which hung from a pipe in one of the corners.

Carmen covered her face with the pink and blue scarf wrapped around her neck. “Where’s Marcello? Is he—?”

“He’s fine.”

She turned her focus to Hiro. “Who are you?”

Juan waved her concern away. “Don’t worry about him or his mask, he’s cool. This is Hiro.”

“And Marcello?” she asked.

“He got injured, but he’s okay. You can heal him.”

“Sure. I’ve made more gauze.” Carmen gestured toward a table in the corner. “Hiro can have some. Is he always wearing a mask?”

“I haven’t known him that long.” Juan approached the table and got some of the gauze. He brought a roll of it back to Hiro. “But he’s had the mask on since we met.”

“Sorry about that,” Hiro said.

“It’s fine, amigo. We all have our reasons. Anyway, this gauze. Carmen’s Roulette Skill gives her saliva healing properties.” Juan gestured to a jug of water and some packaged bedsheets. “She’s been making gauze for us by cutting the sheets into strips.”

“And licking them,” Carmen added. “It’s weird, but it works.”

“See for yourself,” Juan said as handed Hiro the roll of gauze, which was dry.

Healing Gauze, A-Rank

Description: Apply to quickly heal an open wound. Healing Gauze cannot mend a broken bone.

“Thanks.” The Healing Gauze was dry, and while a bit odd, Hiro quickly put it away in the front of his bag as Carmen slurped water from a Big Gulp cup. “I told you to bring some gauze out with you,” she scolded Juan.

“I thought Marcello had some.”

“You both should have some, Juanito. Why am I making it if you don’t carry it with you?”

“We will next time. Sorry—hey!”

Hiro was shoved aside by a medium-sized amalgamation, the winged beast cutting into his exposed arm as it rushed forward.

The beast lunged for Carmen, brought its teeth down onto her head, and ripped her out of her wheelchair. Hiro heard the sickening sound of her neck cracking, her upper torso going limp.

He drew his katana, but by this point, Juan had reached the monster, the big man filled with fury as he beat the monster to death with his baseball bat.

The worst part of all of it was watching Juan strike the amalgamation repeatedly, the way Carmen’s body flapped against the ground, and the way it eventually fell under the weight of the amalgamation as the monster died.

Juan turned back to him, the big man covered in blood.

He pointed his bat at Hiro. “You could have done something.” Tears fell from his cheeks. “You could have fucking done something!”